Kasandra
Perkins was gunned down by her boyfriend, and father of their three-month
old baby, Jovan Belcher. Belcher later shot himself in front of his
Kansas City Chiefs coach and general manager.

Belcher
was a 25-year old linebacker at the top of his game. Not surprisingly,
the tragedy has served as a springboard for calls for more gun control.

Leading
the charge for citizen disarmament is NBC commentator Bob Costas. During
Sunday’s game, Costas referenced a piece by Fox Sports News columnist
Jason Whitlock and opined that if Belcher had not possessed a gun, Perkins
would still be alive.

Really?
A football player needs a gun to murder a woman? Someone should ask
the surviving family of Nicole Brown Simpson that question.

Perhaps
Mr. Costas would have been disappointed if Ms. Perkins had had access
to a gun and shot Belcher first? Would he then have thought there were
too many guns? Actually, he might not have even heard about a self-defense
shooting. Outside of the local press, self-defense shootings rarely
make national news.

To
be sure, there are so many self-defense shootings each year that the
national news would be carrying several accounts a day. Guns are used
over 4,000 times a day (using conservative research findings) in self-defense.
In fact, using those conservative figures given us by the Clinton Justice
Department, guns are used 50 times more often in self-defense than to
illegitimately take life.

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What
exactly does Bob Costas mean by too many guns? How would the absence
of a gun in Jovan Belcher’s hands have protected Kasandra Perkins?

Perhaps
one obvious answer is that Bob Costas should stick to opining about
subjects with which he is familiar. NBC News would do Mr. Costas a favor
by telling him that his job depends on him sticking to sports and not
political commentary. By the same token, I promise not to speak out
as a sports commentator.

Erich
Pratt is the Director of Communications for Gun
Owners of America, a national gun lobby with over 300,000 members.
GOA is located at 8001 Forbes Place, Springfield, VA 22151.

Either Pratt or
another GOA spokesman is available for press interviews.

Larry Pratt has been Executive Director of Gun
Owners of America for 27 years. GOA is a national membership organization
of 300,000 Americans dedicated to promoting their second amendment freedom
to keep and bear arms.

He published a book, Armed People Victorious,
in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution
& Militias, 1995. His latest book, On the Firing Line: Essays in the Defense
of Liberty was published in 2001.